These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.
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Deuteronomy 6:6-9 sits inside this longer paragraph.
Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.
Parallel Translations
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These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart;
and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.
You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.
You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.
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And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
Show all 3 translations
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And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart;
and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes.
And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Commandments (5)
The laws of the Torah, each cited and shown as a primary source.
Cross-references (57)
- Deuteronomy 11:19 (v7) You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when…
- Ephesians 6:4 (v7) You fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
- Psalms 78:4-6 (v7) We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of Yahweh, his strength, and his wondrous deeds…
- Colossians 3:16 (v6) Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,…
- Proverbs 7:3 (vv6, 8) Bind them on your fingers. Write them on the tablet of your heart.
Show all 55 cross-references
- Proverbs 6:21 (v8) Bind them continually on your heart. Tie them around your neck.
- 1 Peter 3:15 (v7) But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is…
- Jeremiah 31:33 (v6) “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says Yahweh: “I will put my law in their inward…
- Deuteronomy 11:18 (vv6, 8) Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall…
- Deuteronomy 4:9-10 (v7) Only be careful, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes saw, and lest they depart from your heart all…
- Deuteronomy 6:2 (v7) that you might fear Yahweh your God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you—you, your son, and your son’s son,…
- Proverbs 3:3 (v8) Don’t let kindness and truth forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart.
- 2 Corinthians 3:3 (v6) being revealed that you are a letter of Christ, served by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets…
- Ephesians 4:29 (v7) Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but only what is good for building others up as the need may be, that it may give grace to…
- Exodus 13:9 (v8) It shall be for a sign to you on your hand, and for a memorial between your eyes, that Yahweh’s law may be in your mouth; for with a strong…
- Deuteronomy 11:20 (v9) You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates;
- Psalms 37:31 (v6) The law of his God is in his heart. None of his steps shall slide.
- Genesis 18:19 (v7) For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of Yahweh, to do…
- Deuteronomy 32:46 (v6) He said to them, “Set your heart to all the words which I testify to you today, which you shall command your children to observe to do, all…
- Proverbs 6:22 (v7) When you walk, it will lead you. When you sleep, it will watch over you. When you awake, it will talk with you.
- Exodus 12:26-27 (v7) It will happen, when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ that you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of Yahweh’s…
- Psalms 119:11 (v6) I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
- Exodus 13:16 (v8) It shall be for a sign on your hand, and for symbols between your eyes; for by strength of hand Yahweh brought us out of Egypt.”
- Numbers 15:38-39 (v8) “Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them that they should make themselves fringes on the borders of their garments throughout their…
- Isaiah 30:8 (v9) Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever.
- Luke 6:45 (v7) The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings out that which is good, and the evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart…
- Psalms 40:9-10 (v7) I have proclaimed glad news of righteousness in the great assembly. Behold, I will not seal my lips, Yahweh, you know. I have not hidden…
- Isaiah 51:7 (v6) “Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law. Don’t fear the reproach of men, and don’t be dismayed at…
- Exodus 13:14-15 (v7) It shall be, when your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What is this?’ that you shall tell him, ‘By strength of hand Yahweh brought…
- Proverbs 3:5 (v6) Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and don’t lean on your own understanding.
- Isaiah 57:8 (v9) You have set up your memorial behind the doors and the posts, for you have exposed yourself to someone besides me, and have gone up. You…
- Matthew 12:35 (v7) The good man out of his good treasure brings out good things, and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings out evil things.
- Matthew 23:5 (v8) But they do all their works to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad, enlarge the fringes of their garments,
- Luke 8:15 (v6) Those in the good ground, these are those who with an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it tightly, and produce fruit with…
- Hebrews 2:1 (v8) Therefore we ought to pay greater attention to the things that were heard, lest perhaps we drift away.
- Psalms 40:8 (v6) I delight to do your will, my God. Yes, your law is within my heart.”
- Proverbs 10:21 (v7) The lips of the righteous feed many, but the foolish die for lack of understanding.
- Proverbs 15:2 (v7) The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouth of fools gush out folly.
- Luke 2:51 (v6) And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth. He was subject to them, and his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.
- Colossians 4:6 (v7) Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.
- Psalms 119:46 (v7) I will also speak of your statutes before kings, and will not be disappointed.
- Psalms 129:8 (v7) Neither do those who go by say, “The blessing of Yahweh be on you. We bless you in Yahweh’s name.”
- Proverbs 2:10-11 (v6) For wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you,
- Proverbs 3:1-3 (v6) My son, don’t forget my teaching; but let your heart keep my commandments: for they will add to you length of days, years of life, and…
- Proverbs 15:7 (v7) The lips of the wise spread knowledge; not so with the heart of fools.
- Habakkuk 2:2 (v9) Yahweh answered me, “Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he who runs may read it.
- Exodus 12:7 (v9) They shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two door posts and on the lintel, on the houses in which they shall eat it.
- Ruth 4:11 (v7) All the people who were in the gate, and the elders, said, “We are witnesses. May Yahweh make the woman who has come into your house like…
- Job 19:23-25 (v9) “Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! That with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock…
- Psalms 37:30 (v7) The mouth of the righteous talks of wisdom. His tongue speaks justice.
- Psalms 119:98 (v6) Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for your commandments are always with me.
- Malachi 3:16 (v7) Then those who feared Yahweh spoke one with another; and Yahweh listened, and heard, and a book of memory was written before him, for those…
- Ruth 2:4 (v7) Behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said to the reapers, “May Yahweh be with you.” They answered him, “May Yahweh bless you.”
- 2 John 1:2 (v6) for the truth’s sake, which remains in us, and it will be with us forever:
- Ruth 2:12 (v7) May Yahweh repay your work, and a full reward be given to you from Yahweh, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take…
55 distinct cross-references across this passage (57 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (17 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv7–9 Some read, thou shalt whet them upon thy children:…
Some read, thou shalt whet them upon thy children: to wit, that they may print them more deeply in memory.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv6–9 Deu 6:6 And these words, which I command thee…
Deu 6:6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
Ver. 6. Shall be in thy heart.] A Bible men should get stamped in their heads, and another in their hearts, as David had. {Psa 119:11} Knowledge that swims in the head only, and sinks not down into the heart, does no more good than rain in the middle region doth; or than the unicorn’s horn in the unicorn’s head.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv6–8 i.e. In thy mind to remember them, and meditate…
i.e. In thy mind to remember them, and meditate upon them, and in thy affection to love and pursue them.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv6–9 And these words, which I command thee this day,....…
And these words, which I command thee this day,.... To hearken to, observe, and take notice of, that God is one, and is to be loved in the strongest manner that possibly can be:
shall be in thine heart; on the table of the heart, as the Targum of Jonathan; see Co2 3:3, be cordially received, have a place in the affections of the heart, and be retained in mind and memory.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv7–8 Teach them diligently - Hebrew. whet, or sharpen them,…
Teach them diligently - Hebrew. whet, or sharpen them, so as they may pierce deep into their hearts. This metaphor signifies the manner of instructing them, that it is to be done diligently, earnestly, frequently, discreetly.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv6–9 Verse 6. Shall be in thine heart] For where…
Verse 6. Shall be in thine heart] For where else can love be? If it be not in the heart, it exists not. And if these words be not in the heart - if they are not esteemed, prized, and received as a high and most glorious privilege, what hope is there that this love shall ever reign there?
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv6–8 Deu 6:6. These words shall be in thy heart…
Deu 6:6. These words shall be in thy heart — Though the words alone, without the things expressed by them, will do us no good, yet as we are in danger of losing the things if we neglect the words, we must, therefore, even lay the words up in our hearts. Our thoughts must be daily conversant with them, and employed about them, that thereby our whole soul may be brought under the influence and impression of them.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v8 By adopting and regulating customary usages (e. g. Egyptian)…
By adopting and regulating customary usages (e. g. Egyptian) Moses provides at once a check on superstition and a means of keeping the Divine Law in memory. On the “frontlets,” the “phylacteries” of the New Test. Mat 23:5, see Exo 13:16. On Deu 6:9; Deu 11:20 is based the Jewish usage of the mezuzah. This word denotes properly a door-post, as it is rendered here and in Exo 12:7, Exo 12:22; Exo 21:6 etc. Among the Jews however, it is the name given to the square piece of parchment, inscribed with Deu 6:4-9; Deu 11:13-21, which is rolled up in a small cylinder of wood or metal, and affixed to the right-hand post of every door in a Jewish house. The pious Jew touches the mezuzah on each occasion of passing, or kisses his finger, and speaks Psa 121:8 in the Hebrew language.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv7–8 Tell. Hebrew, "thou shalt chew them" as nurses do…
Tell. Hebrew, "thou shalt chew them" as nurses do bread for their little ones; or thou shalt "sharpen," like a razor, "explain clearly and often," these precepts, which are of the utmost importance. --- Meditate; speak of them to others, (Calmet) and entertain thyself with them in thy own heart. The mouth of the just man shall meditate wisdom, and (that is) his tongue shall speak judgment, Psalm xxxvi. 30., and Exodus xiii. 9. --- Sleeping. The spouse, in the canticle, (Canticle of Canticles v. 2,) says, I sleep, and my heart watcheth. If we carefully direct our intention, we may merit even when we are incapable of thinking. God will reward our good desires. Our last and first thoughts ought, in a particular manner, to be consecrated to God, (Haydock) when we go to rest and when we arise, (Menochius) as he is our first beginning, the source of all graces, and our last end, to whom we ought to refer every thing, even our ordinary actions of sleeping, labour, and diversion. If we make his divine perfections and his law the subject of our daily meditations, our soul will naturally be affected with the same sentiments during the night. Quicquid luce fuit tenebris agit. "The occurrences of the day have an influence upon our dreams;" (Petronius) and as we are accountable for many things by placing the cause, which in the hours of sleep or of drunkenness we are not able to prevent, so it cannot be doubted but that we shall increase in virtue, if we regulate our thoughts and actions in a proper manner, even when our soul is incapable of exerting her faculties. Hence we may perceive, of what vast importance it is to have a pure intention. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv6–9 6. These words,… shall be in thine heart —…
6. These words,… shall be in thine heart — The passage might be rendered, “Let these words be in thine heart.” Comp. Jer_31:33 : “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.”
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv6–9 6. these words with which I am charging thee…
6. these words with which I am charging thee this day] Elsewhere the phrase in whole or part refers to the whole discourse of Moses (e.g. Deu_11:18), but here it must mean the two preceding verses as the essence of the law.
shall be upon thine heart] Deu_11:18, lay up in your heart and in your soul; Jer_31:33, I put my law in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts. As the heart was the seat of the practical intellect, this means to commit them to memory; but with a conscience to do them.
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6–9. Further enforcement of this greed and duty.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv7–8 (7) And thou shalt teach them diligently.—The same Jewish…
(7) And thou shalt teach them diligently.—The same Jewish commentator remarks that there should be no hesitation in answering anything that a man might ask. Had this system of education been carried on from the first, the history of Israel would hare been very different from what it is.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv6, 8 Vers. 6, 7. Where true love to God exists…
Vers. 6, 7. Where true love to God exists in the heart, it will manifest itself in a regard to his will, and in the diligent keeping of his commandments. Hence his words were to be not only in the memory of the people, but laid upon their heart, (cf. Deu_11:18) that they might be ever present to the thought and will. They were also to be inculcated upon their children, and to be the subject of conversation on all fitting occasions between them, the members of their household, and even their casual associates. Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children; literally, Thou shalt sharpen them to thy children, impress them upon them, send them into them like a sharp weapon.
Vers. 6-9, 20-25. The religious education of children.
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A matter much insisted on in these addresses (cf. Deu_11:18-22) We learn
I THAT THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IS GOD"S WAY OF PERPETUATING VITAL RELIGION. Without this, religion would soon die out; with it, a holy seed will be kept up in times of greatest declension.
II THAT THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN DEVOLVES PRIMARILY ON THE PARENT. The Church, Sunday schools, etc., may assist, but nothing can relieve the parent from this duty, or compensate for his neglect of it. (Eph_6:4; 2Ti_1:5)
III THAT THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IS TO BE CONDUCTED WITH GREAT CARE AND FAITHFULNESS.
1. Very diligently (ver. 7). It is to be gone about most painstakingly and systematically. "In thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." There is need for specific teaching at regular times, but the text indicates a broader view of this part of parental duty. An element pervading the whole life, blending with all occupation, insinuating its pleasant influence in all our intercourse with our children.
2. Very particularly (vers. 21-25). A specimen is given of the careful instruction parents are to study to impart.
3. Taking advantage of a childs natural curiosity (ver. 21). The principle of curiosity is strong in children. It early manifests itself in reference to religion. The Bible, with its delightful variety of story, parable, proverb, etc., is peculiarly adapted for the instruction of the young. J.O.
Vers. 6-25. Family training is to propagate the Law.
The Law has as its essence love. In the family, love"s home and circle, this Law is to be propagated. And here we are to noticeI PARENTS ARE TO IDENTIFY THEMSELVES WITH GOD"S CAUSE. The Jews were directed to wear portions of the Law upon their persons. This is the sign of identification with it in a rude age. The idea is parental profession, a glad identification of themselves with the Lord"s cause.
II THE HOME IS ALSO TO BE CONSECRATED AS A GODLY HOME. God"s Law was to be written on the posts of the house and on their gates. This, like the last, meant the identification of the house with God"s cause. Now, there is as much difference between an ungodly home and a godly one as between an unconverted person and a converted one (cf. Pressense"s "La Famille Chrenenne," a most admirable course of sermons).
III THE CHILDREN ARE MANIFESTLY MEANT TO BE THE COMPANIONS OF THE PARENTS. The little ones are to have their parents" society at home and abroad, at morning and night (ver. 7). The mistake made by many parents is not making themselves sufficiently companionable. It is companionship that after all determines the bent of children.
IV THE HOME TRAINING IS TO BE RELIGIOUS. God"s Law is to be brought, in, morning, noon, and night, as the great interest. Of course, if parents are to do this as God intends, his Law must be a great personal interest to themselves. They must delight in it and love it, and make it a matter of study continually.
V AMID THE SECULARITIES OF EDUCATION THE HOME MUST BE THE MAINSTAY OF RELIGION. With the parent the responsibility of training and interesting the children in religion eventually rests. To the well-ordering of Christian homes, Church and State must alike look as the last refuge. The adjustment of rival interests in education is well-nigh impossible, and so it becomes all the more needful that the home should be made to supply the religious element, whatever course educational arrangements and legislation may take.
VI PROSPERITY MUST NOT ENGENDER ATHEISM. This is the warning here given to Israel. God might be forgotten amid the success and prosperity of Canaan. For it is prosperity, not adversity, which as a rule engenders atheism. The prosperity of the prodigal led him away to the far off land of forgetfulness of God, while his adversity brought him back. R.M.E. (Luk_15:11-32)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v6 These words . . . shall be in thine…
Deu_6:6-9
These words . . . shall be in thine heart.
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The Scriptures to be laid to heart, and diligently taught
I. The words concerning which the command is given, their nature and importance.
1. Their supernatural origin.
2. The extraordinary manner in which God has sanctioned them, in the signs and wonders performed by those who spoke or wrote the things declared in them.
3. The evident excellence and useful tendency of their contents, to make us wise unto salvation.
II. The command given concerning these things.
1. We must not be indifferent, but deeply impressed with, and concerned about, these things; that is, about Divine revelation in general, its truth, its importance, its contents; and about that religion set forth in this passage, as above explained, consisting in the knowledge and love of God.
2. We must see that this is religion, and this alone; and that if we rest short of this, we rest short of religion.
3. We must be concerned to have proper views of, to experience, and to practise this religion.
III. The obligations which lie upon us to obey this command.
1. Gratitude; for this book lays us under great, yea, infinite obligations. Consider what would have been our condition had we not had the Bible--how ignorant, sinful, and miserable!
2. The express command of God, who gave us the Scriptures, lays us under an indispensable obligation: He is our Creator, Benefactor, Redeemer, Lawgiver, and Judge. He solemnly enjoins us to have these things in our hearts.
3. The example of our Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles, etc., who all made these things the subjects of their chief study and discourse from day to day.
4. Compassion for and love to our children--mortal and immortal beings; to whom, under God, we have given being, and who are committed to our care by Him, the great proprietor and governor of all, who says, All souls are Mine.
5. Our own interest should influence us; and that for time and for eternity. For if we have not Gods Word in general, and the knowledge and love of God in particular, in our own hearts, we shall be miserable here, and perish everlastingly hereafter. And if we do not inculcate these things on our children and dependants, and those on whom we might inculcate them, and they perish, God will require their blood, their souls, at our hands. (J. Benson.)
An ever-present religion
I. Religion claims to take a foremost place in human affairs. The law is to be everywhere set forth clear and conspicuous. As the ancient Egyptians are said to have worn jewels on the forehead and arm inscribed with sacred words and amulets, and as the Mohammedans now paint over their doors sentences from the Koran, such as God is the Creator, God is one, and Mahomet is His prophet, so the Jews carried on their bodies, and wrote upon their houses, some of the most important passages of their law. Such a practice was liable to the abuse of ostentatious vanity. But are not we in danger of falling into the opposite fault through the intense reserve in which we hide our religious life? When we do recognise the right of religion to take its true place in the world, what shall we dare to set before it? This right is based on two grounds:
1. The essential value of the subjects treated by it.
2. The authority which it carries. Our religion must not be a mere matter of taste, of sentiment, and of philosophic speculation. It must be regarded as obedience to the will of our supreme Lord and Master.
II. Religion needs to be constantly impressed upon us. We do not have to set up maxims about our streets urging us to make haste to get rich, nor in our houses to prevent us from forgetting our daily meals. But the spiritual appetite is less keen, and requires to be whetted by constant teaching, by line upon line and precept upon precept.
III. Religion must begin in the heart. It is impossible to have religion in the outer life unless it grow from within. Nothing is easier than to put on the show of it. Anyone can hang texts about his house. But to infuse real religion into the home is impossible except it grow out of inward spiritual devotion. The fruit cannot grow without a root. To be in the heart the Divine Word must be--
(1) In the understanding, not merely heard of in meaningless words, nor practised in mechanical acts, but intelligently realised.
(2) In the memory, not read for a moment and forgotten as soon as the book is closed, but carried in the mind, its sacred truths haunting the thoughts.
(3) In the affections, not coldly contemplated, but lovingly cherished. To this end we must seek the aid of Gods Holy Spirit to enable us to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest His truth.
IV. Religion should grow out into every branch of life. Though it begins in the heart it cannot contain itself there forever; if the fountain is ever bubbling up it must issue in the flowing stream. When there is life in the root it is impossible to prevent the tree from breaking out into leaves, sooner or later. Like the sunlight pervading hill and plain, like the fragrant odour of incense penetrating to the inmost recess of the sanctuary, true religion must spread itself abroad, and reach down to the minutest details of life. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.)
Words in the heart
1. The style of the Book of Deuteronomy is unlike that of the preceding books of the Pentateuch, and this may be accounted for by the fact that the contents are very different. The language of Deuteronomy is in the main hortatory.
2. The lawgiver is seen in this book to be full of zeal for God, and of earnest desire for the well-being of the people. His exhortations to obedience have been truly said to be deeply fraught with holy and patriotic feeling.
3. There is something of a valedictory tone throughout these pages. The forty years wanderings are almost concluded, and the death of Moses is near at hand. Moses, giving injunctions to Israel before his departure, is typical to the final commands of Jesus Christ before His Ascension.
I. The words were to be in their heart.
1. What words? The commandments of God, as summed up in the verses which precede the text. Having first asserted the truth that God is a Spirit, for the people were reminded, when the Lord spake unto them out of the midst of the fire, that they heard a voice, but saw no similitude (Deu_4:12); so now, the Unity of the Godhead is clearly revealed: The Lord our God is one Lord. Further, Moses drew from the doctrine of the Divine Unity that God must be the sole Object of Israels love and obedience--of a devotion which claimed all the heart and soul and might for its rightful exercise.
2. These words were to be in their heart, or upon their heart, as something written and engraven upon the memory. This faculty was to be the treasure house of the Law of God. Constantly in Holy Scripture exhortations and institutions had for their object the prevention of forgetfulness of the Divine Law and Divine mercies: My son, forget not My Law, (Pro_3:1). The Sabbath was a reminder of Creation; the Passover, of the deliverance from Egypt; and twelve stones were set up for a memorial of the passing over Jordan. To remember the presence of God and the commandments of God and His goodness was a stringent duty, for these were to form the guide of life and the stimulus of devotion.
3. To forget God was a sin in itself. Beware lest thou forget the Lord, the prophet continues, especially in days of affluence and prosperity in Canaan. It was Moses reproach--almost his dying reproach: Of the Rock that begat thee, thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee (Deu_32:18). And forgetfulness of God leads to all sin.
II. Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children.
1. There never was a time when this Divine command needed more to be accentuated than at present. Secular education is only partial education; it omits to train the moral and spiritual, the higher elements of our being. It has been wisely said by a French statesman, Strong, definite, religious convictions constitute the real strength of any country. He might have added, of any soul.
2. Religious instruction of the young is necessary, because God commanded it. That is a clear and definite ground to go upon, for all who believe the Scriptures. Further, it stands to reason that if religion is to be our guide in the midst of a sinful world, we want that guide for all ages. Childhood as well as maturity belongs to God, and must be sanctified by God. The image of the Child Christ, with the words, Hear ye Him, placed by Dean Colet over the masters chair in St. Pauls Grammar School, was his way of showing the importance of religious education, and of teaching children that they should follow Christ and be made like unto Him, if they would become true men and women.
3. Moreover, youth is the time when powers are fresh, and the truths which God has revealed can be best taken in and assimilated. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth (Ecc_12:1). It is the time for acquiring deep convictions and of forming habits (Pro_22:6).
4. Youth is an age when we are more liable to be led astray by passion and the first taste of the world; and therefore the restraining and blessed influences of religion are the more necessary.
III. Lessons.
1. To strive to remember the Divine commands and the presence of God.
2. In the heart. Not merely an intellectual action, as learning by heart, though this is important; but by loving obedience to God, and devotion to Him.
3. To teach religion to thy children. A ground for forcing the importance of religious instruction in our schools, and that definite. The text says, these words.
4. But further, a lesson for parents, upon whom the task devolves, that in the home, as well as at the school, the children should be instructed in the truths of Christianity, as the most momentous of parental duties. (Canon Hutchings, M. A.)
The duties and privileges of pious parents
I. The duties of believing parents.
1. Love to God is the first and great duty of every moral being. Without this there can be good neither in the individual nor in his life and actions.
2. The Word of God should be the object of constant and unremitting study. This is a work for life.
3. The Word of God should dwell in the heart of the believer richly; and at all times, and in all places, it ought to be the chief employment of his mind. This leads to saving knowledge of God and of His will; and this, by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, will make the believer wise unto salvation, and, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, will do so likewise unto his children.
4. We should make the Word of God known to others--such as our friends, our associates, our neighbours, and that, too, as extensively as possible. Thus the believer is kept constantly in communion with God by love, and by the Scriptures; and thus he becomes more and more conformed to Gods image every day.
5. But the believer should make known the Word of God to the world as far as possible, by recommending it, and by circulating it, as far as possible, amongst his necessitous fellow creatures.
II. The privileges of pious persons.
1. They are great gainers themselves; for, by loving the Lord their God with all their heart, they have the experience of heaven begun in their soul: all is life, power, readiness, willingness, and ability to do the whole will of God--and heaven just consists of this in perfection. This gives satisfaction; this gives joy and peace in believing.
2. They are great gainers, because their whole intellectual powers are satisfied with Divine influences: their understanding is satisfied with knowledge of the Divine nature, the Divine perfections, the Divine persons, the Divine will, the Divine promises, the Divine blessings, and the Divine word.
3. They are great gainers, because the whole man, soul and body, with the members, powers, and faculties, are dedicated to God, and are employed in His service and enjoyment. This is employment for the real Christian both in this world and the next.
All Christians should daily be thus occupied, for this is answering the end of their creation.
1. But another unspeakable privilege is comprehended in our text, and that is, These words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. This is to be conformed to the Divine image; this is to be like the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Another unspeakable privilege is comprehended in our text, and that is, the instruction and edification of children.
3. This privilege is extensive, and may embrace not only the children, but also the servants, and all others connected with the family, by consanguinity, friendship, or otherwise.
4. The believers privilege extends to all men, as far as in his power. Thus, the circle extends from the point--self--round the circumference of the globe! How exalted the consideration of being instrumental in the hand of God, of being so extensively useful in increasing the Church on earth, and the Church in heaven--of profiting the souls and bodies of men--of promoting the glory of God both in time and through eternity! (James Kidd, D. D.)
Familiarity with the Word of God
I. The words of God are the treasure of the heart. Wherever they be, if they are not in the heart they fail to answer the Divine intention. They are made for the heart, and the heart is made for them. Let them be there first, and it will follow that they will be everywhere else where they are needed.
II. The words of God are the theme of the conversation. There is a picturesque completeness in the enumeration of the occasions upon which these words are to be talked of--at home, abroad, evening, and morning. Though His words in origin, they are our words in use.
III. The words of God are the ornament of the life. The Jews adorned their persons with texts of Scripture, written upon papyrus or parchment, and enclosed within little boxes or cylinders, which were worn upon the hand or the brow: an emblem of their intimacy and familiarity with Divine truth, and to us a reminder that our life, our politics, our literature, our art, should all be governed by the principles and motives presented in revelation.
IV. The words of God are the law of the home and household. Scraps of Scripture were suspended by the threshold of the house surely to intimate that in a sense every Israelites home was a temple sacred unto the Lord. Our households are protected, and guided, and hallowed, when the Divine Word is their supreme authority.
V. The words of God are the inheritance of our children. Whatever parents fail to do for their offspring, to bequeath to them, let them, above all things, hand down to them the precious and sacred deposit of truth, teaching diligently unto their children what they themselves have received from those who have gone before them. (Homilist.)
The Bible not too good to be used
Some years ago I had occasion to send a parcel to an honest, hardworking bricklayer who lived in the country. It contained, besides sundry little presents for his wife and children, a trowel for his own use, made in a superior way, with a mahogany handle; and often did I fancy that I saw him hard at work with the trowel in his hand. Last summer, being in the neighbourhood, I called at the cottage of the honest bricklayer, when, to my surprise, I saw the trowel which I had sent him exhibited over the chimney-piece as a curiosity. It had been considered too good to use, and consequently had never been of the slightest use to its owner. (George Mogridge.)
Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children.
On the religious instruction of children
I. To mention some of those things which parents are commanded to teach their children.
1. In the first place, then, inculcate upon them an early reverence for God. Teach them this duty even before they can understand who and what He is; and let them see it exemplified in yourselves, by your seriousness in speaking of Him, and by your humility in every act of Divine worship.
2. Teach them also an early value for the Scriptures. Let them know that the Bible is the Word of God; that it is the best book in the world; that it is more to be desired than gold; and that, if it were not for the discoveries, instructions, and promises contained in it, they and you, and all mankind, would be ignorant and wretched beyond imagination.
3. Let them also acquire an early sense of a future state, blest children are giddy and thoughtless. The trifling engagements of the present hour are all that they regard; and it often happens that the world with its baubles strikes so strongly upon their imaginations, and fixes such an early and rooted prejudice in its favour as is not easily eradicated. You should, therefore, endeavour to convince them, as soon as possible, that the present state is only a passage to another.
4. Forget not to inculcate upon them an early love to our Lord Jesus Christ. Take the first opportunity to inform them of their obligations to Him; and let them know that if they have any comfort in this world, or any hopes as to a future, they owe it all to the kindness of the blessed Redeemer.
5. Habituate your children to the early practice of prayer.
II. To suggest some directions to parents in this important and difficult work.
1. Take care, then, to he well instructed yourselves.
2. Begin with them very early.
3. Continue your instructions with diligence and perseverance.
4. It is also of great importance that you maintain a proper authority.
5. I would further advise you to accommodate yourselves to their tempers and capacities.
6. Be concerned especially to set them a good example; walk before them in the way in which you would have them go; and show them, by your practice, that you by no means require impossibilities. Let them see in you the amiableness and advantages of self-government and universal piety.
7. Sanctify all by your prayers.
III. The encouragements which parents have to teach their children diligently. Nature and grace, reason and religion urge this strongly.
1. It will be a good evidence of your own sincerity.
2. It is also the best proof of love to your children. It should encourage you in the discharge of this duty to consider that it is the best means of promoting the glory of God and the revival of decaying religion.
3. These pious efforts will also comfort you on the death of your children.
4. That an attention to the spiritual welfare of your children will afford you unspeakable consolation in the hour of your death.
IV. To obviate some of the most common and material objections against this important and necessary duty. Various are the excuses that are made; but they are generally dictated by indolence, rather than by real conviction. Some object their want of ability. We would gladly instruct our children, you say, but we are ignorant ourselves. Ministers are the fittest persons to undertake it, for it is a part of their office. If your ignorance be real and not merely a pretence to silence conscience, if you really do not know the plain principles of religion, it is high time for you to learn. Had you your own souls only to attend to, it were a shame to continue unacquainted with the glad tidings of salvation. But if you only mean that you know not how to communicate that little knowledge which you have to your children; that you cannot talk to them so pertinently and fluently as others; I answer that not strength of genius, but a willing mind is required; and if you once undertake it, you will find your abilities increase by exercise. Others object their want of time. But while you have sabbaths you surely cannot plead want of time for the neglect of your duty. Remember that you must all find time to die. Let me beseech you to attend to this duty, which will contribute greatly to make your deathbed easy. Others, again, object their want of success. But do you expect to pass through the world without difficulties and discouragements? You have met with disappointments in your worldly business, and yet yon did not presently give it up in despair. It is more than probable that your want of success may be traced to some guilty defect in yourselves. But if you have been never so diligent and faithful, and with little apparent success, persevere notwithstanding. The last thing you say to them may reach their hearts. The last effort which you make may be successful. You will, at least, deliver your own souls; and you will have the testimony of a good conscience. (S. Lavington.)
The importance of scriptural education
The truth that the Word of God is Gods instrumentality for reforming and saving man, is the foundation of our present argument for the religious education of our children. We would enlarge the mind, elevate the character, and ennoble the nature of our children; we would lift them up above the mere degradation of working animals; we would ennoble them so as to give them a capacity for intellectual enjoyment and rational happiness; we would wish to make them not only loyal and faithful subjects of their earthly sovereign, but devout servants of the King of kings; we would endeavour to cheer them amidst the privations and agonies of poverty they are frequently called to endure, with a view of the glorious hopes that are created in us by the Christianity of the Scriptures; and it is because we desire this that we would give them a Christian education. We live in times when thrones are utterly shaken to pieces, when sceptres are shivered to atoms; a moral earthquake is heaving the foundations of society. In times like these we may well turn our thoughts to the right instruction of our children; in times like these, when the freedom of the press has been proclaimed, when all men seem to be speculating as to the best means of securing national prosperity and individual happiness; in times like these, fraught with incalculable evil, as well as with immeasurable good; in times like these, so peculiar, so startling, we may well apply ourselves to the imparting of the sound principles of true religion to our children, that so those who are now the youth of our land may grow up to be a rightly-instructed as well as holy people. We have seen in that nation which hath, in a century gone by, flung aside the law of God and lightly regarded the Word of Jehovah, judgment following judgment, in revolution following revolution. Truly there is a judgment from heaven upon that nation that will not acknowledge God, and who lightly esteem the Word of God. But if we would express ourselves thus strongly of the neglect of the Word of God in education, we would also express ourselves strongly in reference to the blessedness of the country where that Word is honoured by being employed in the education of the people. Education without religion is education without God, and therefore education without the blessing of God; and if we, in the education we impart to our children, mingle the truths of our holy religion with everything, we shall draw down a blessing upon our homes and happiness upon our hearts; we shall be blessed in our mountains and in our valleys, and the whole land will be glad and rejoice in the presence of God. (M. H. Seymour, M. A.)
Family training
I. When the family has been constituted in accordance with Gods natural laws, parents may have encouragement that all the laws of nature are working in their favour. Like produces like. This tendency may be modified, and in extreme cases overruled, by antagonistic laws; nevertheless, this is the course that is provided for. And, with a single exception here and there, children, comprehensively regarded, tend to become what their parents were, and their parents. They represent their ancestry. And this is as true morally as in feature, in intellect, or in any ordinary disposition. Nothing shows more strikingly the power of blood and this great law than the recuperative power of different kinds of men when they have fallen into evil. Anybody can fall into evil. The difference between one man and another is not in their slipping into the river, but in their extricating themselves when they have once slipped in. Everybodys child may fall into temptation through inexperience; but, after having fallen into temptation, it is not everybodys child that can recover himself. The child of parents that have the resiliency of a moral constitution will be apt to recover himself; whereas, the child of parents that have no such resiliency will be apt to go from bad to worse, clear down to the desolating end.
II. While this general tendency should encourage us, it may also inspire hopefulness, in special cases and difficulties.
1. Many of the infelicities of our children spring more from our ignorance than from any evil that is in them. Your child has in many respects just the same tendencies that you have. Yet we treat our children almost as if we were not to bear their burdens, to be conscious of their tastes of mind, and to administer according to their wants.
2. Many dangerous traits in childhood, that would be exceedingly discouraging if they were to hold on, will disappear in later life, and that too by the force of natural causes. Children, you know, have to run through certain diseases of the body. So they do of the mind. There are times when children will lie. There are periods when children will steal. There seems to be mumps of obstinacy, and rash of irritability, and measles of lying--and there are no measles half so bad as those. And many parents, seeing these early indications, reason upon them in this way: How could this child do that thing? Why, as far back as I can remember, I did not do it. How is it with your husband? Suppose he says: Though I never consciously told a lie, my child lies inveterately; and what will become of it? I will tell you what will become of it. If the child has a tendency to this perversion, it will require all your care, both of personal instruction and institutional training, to keep his childhood from developing into a manhood of deceit. But if you are careful to train the child aright, just as quick as the whole of its nature is developed, one part will take care of other parts, and help other parts.
3. Many of the deficiencies of children, and of the difficulties of managing them, arise from the fact that the stimulating nature of society and civilisation in our day develop the child prematurely, and that he cannot be held properly until the forces of life are concentrated upon him. If you want your children to behave, you must give them something to do. Society is the training ground of the human race. It is a school of practice, where God means that men shall be disciplined. Your child must go into that society and that life; and if you have brought him up right, he may now and then swerve from the right course, but the probabilities are that he will come out right in the end.
4. Many of the faults of children are only the rude forms of excellences that are not yet ripened. I should be very sorry to have a man judge of my Duchess pears by tasting them now, in July. I should hate to have a man judge of my Delaware grapes by tasting them now. They are sour enough. But a great many parents taste their childrens qualities when they are children; and, because they do not taste good, they are very much alarmed. There are many things to be done before a man is ripened. There is much juice to be changed and elaborated in the child before it can be brought to its normal rendition.
5. Let me speak of one or two of those qualities which secure our children, and which are very few and very simple.
(1) Bring up your children in the habit of openness of conduct and truthfulness.
(2) The next element is self-respect, or the habit of acting, not from what others may think, nor from what may be the consequences to yourself of profit or loss; but from a sense of what is befitting to you--in other words, making a mans own self more important to him than all external considerations.
(3) The other element is conscience. Truthfulness, honour, and conscience--train for these three qualities. Talk with your children about them. Interpret them to them by your conduct. Now, if you bring your children up with these three traits, you have the soil, and you can raise anything you please on that soil. (H. W. Beecher.)
Children taught Christian truths
Children should be taught the principles which they understand not.
1. That they might have occasion much to think of the things that are so much and commonly urged.
2. That if any extremity should come, they might have certain seeds of comfort and direction to guide and support them.
3. That their condemnation might be more just, if having these so much in their mouths, they should not get something of them into their hearts. (J. Trapp.)
On the religious and moral education of the young
I. In what the young should be instructed.
1. It is the duty of parents to teach them to form just sentiments of the Deity. Just views of the perfections and character of God are necessary to all acceptable worship; they elevate the intellectual and moral faculties, and excite in the heart many pleasing emotions.
2. The young should be instructed in the statements of Scripture respecting the fall and the ruin of man.
3. The young must be instructed in the mission and character of the Redeemer, and in the regards which they owe to Him.
4. There are certain qualities which you ought to cultivate in the young, by setting before them their necessity and their importance. Teach them reverence for things sacred. The name of God demands their fear. Teach them to venerate the Word of God. Show them how He hath magnified it above all His name, by the bright impressions of a Divine origin which He hath impressed on it, by the important purposes which He accomplishes by it, and by appointing it to be the rule of judgment when the quick and the dead shall be summoned to meet the Lord in the clouds. Children should be taught to respect the worship of God. Suffer them not to be absent from your family devotions without a real necessity; and beware of performing these in that hurried, careless, or languid manner which will induce them to think lightly of domestic worship. Children should also be taught to venerate the wise and the good, and to consider the Christian virtues as constituting the noblest respectability. The saints may be depressed by poverty, and scorned by those whose respect is attracted only by the titles and the wealth of this world, but they are the excellent of the earth. Inculcate the reverence which is due to the Divine government of the world, and which will maintain faith and patience till calamitous times are past, and preserve from that wantonness and insolence in prosperity by which the goodness of God is so often abused. Mercy is another quality which you should labour to cultivate in the hearts of the young. To impress the lessons of mercy on the heart, some have wisely recommended it to parents, to make children their instruments in dealing their alms to the poor, and in giving instruction to the neglected. The books which you put into the hands of your children, should be such as are adapted to cherish benevolence. Sobriety is another quality which you ought to cultivate in the young. I mean not to intimate that you should labour to repress the sprightliness of childhood and the vivacity of youth, or to recommend a mean, sordid, and gloomy temper. There are gaieties in which they should be indulged, and to debar them from these is to make them detest religion, and count a fathers house, where all is morose and cheerless, no better than a prison. But while you allow them to rejoice in their youth, check all merriment that is unseasonable, unbecoming their characters, or excessive in degree. They must be taught to keep their appetites and passions under the control of reason, and to shun every pleasure which may be dangerous to innocence. Justice is another quality which must be cultivated in the young. Children often discover an impatient desire to possess whatever strikes their fancy: but in this they ought not to be gratified. Children must also be taught to maintain a strict regard for truth. Lying, in children, often arises from vanity and envy, from a wish to aggrandise themselves, and to depreciate the merits of others. To guard them against this practice they should be told how disgraceful it is deemed by men, and how odious it is in the sight of God; that what is gained by lying is but a poor compensation for the dread of detection, and for the infamy which it brings; that the liar forfeits all the confidence of the world; that this is the character of the devil, that he is the father of lies; and that none who love or make falsehoods shall be permitted to enter the heavenly city.
5. Children must be taught to look up to the Holy Spirit for light, grace, and comfort. There are many things mysterious both in the nature and manner of the Spirits operations; but you can find statements in Scripture sufficiently plain to enable you to teach them what they may derive from Him. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the doctrines of Christ; and you must assure them that it is He alone who can exhibit Divine truth in its glory and power, and that without His illumination no instructions of yours, or of the holiest and wisest teachers, can impart to them saving knowledge. He is also a Spirit of Holiness; and you must teach them that the qualities which they ought to cultivate must be implanted by Him, and that whatever semblances of these may be exhibited by unrenewed men, are produced by no sound principle, influenced by no proper motive, and are devoid of all stability. You must likewise explain to them that He is the Comforter whom Christ sends to cheer His disciples amidst all their sorrows; and that by His influence martyrs have gloried in tribulation, and the righteous hope in their death. To Him they must look for support in every afflicting incident; and you may assure them that the pious heart shall find Him ready to relieve, when other comforters are silent, and other friends are no more.
6. The young should be led to serious views of death, judgment, and eternity. Lead their views to the heavenly world, where the good are forever happy in their Fathers house, and in a land where sin, and sorrow, and death are unknown; where they are employed in the everlasting celebration of their Redeemers love; where His image sheds over them the perfection of beauty; where there is social intercourse without jealousy or rivalship, perpetual worship without languor, and pleasures that never lose their relish.
II. The manner in which that instruction should be communicated and enforced.
1. The instructions which you communicate must flow from the heart. Unless you feel a love of the truth, and a zealous concern to impart it, your lessons will be delivered in a manner so cold that your children will hear them with no interest. They easily discern, when you speak from conviction and feeling. Instructions which are marked by parental affection and pious solicitude will awe the giddiest into attention, and soften the most stubborn.
2. The lessons of religion and morality should be taught with diligence. Much attention will be requisite to find out the evil principles which are most likely to influence your children, and the quarter in which they are most vulnerable by temptation; and when you are aware of these, you must labour to mortify their corrupt propensities, and to guard what is most exposed to danger.
3. The young must be instructed frequently. In walking with them on the highway or through the fields there are many objects which call your attention to these lessons; and in teaching them to contemplate the scenes of nature in the spirit of devotion, you will cherish in them a relish for the purest pleasures, and open to them a source of unfailing entertainment during the whole of life. Your duty requires many of you to leave your dwellings early in the morning, yet go not forth till you have given, if it is possible, a serious counsel to the young. It may work in their minds during your absence, and will probably suggest such a thought as this, My fathers heart must be strongly set on my being wise and good, since he can never leave me without urging me to it. In the evening, ere you retire to rest, forget not to ask how they have spent the day, and what improvement they have made since you left them. The idea of such an inquiry will be a powerful incitement to the diligence of your children. On the morning of the Lords day your instructions should commence as early as possible. Improve every incident that happens in the family, or in the neighbourhood, to enforce religious instruction. I shall only state further on this topic this short maxim, Let instruction be your daily task, and it will be your daily pleasure.
4. Instruction should be communicated in a familiar manner. Your ideas must be expressed in simple language, and illustrated from objects with which they are acquainted.
5. Your instructions must be enforced by a suitable example. Piety appears most venerable in a fathers devotion, and love to Christ most delightful in a mothers praise. Nowhere does integrity seem so noble as in a fathers abhorrence of all that is base and deceitful; nor charity so lovely as in a mothers sympathy with the mourner. Nowhere does patience appear more amiable than in their silence while in agony; nor faith more triumphant than in the support which it gives them in their last struggle, and in their last farewell.
6. Prayer to God must accompany all your instructions. You must pray that your children may be enlightened by the spirit of wisdom; that their tempers may be softened by the grace of meekness; that their hearts may be sanctified by the washing of regeneration; that their education may be blessed by the care of heaven, and their lives adorned with the fruits of holiness. Let these prayers be sometimes put up before them. In such a situation the young will be led to such reflections as these, Can I continue an enemy to that God whose mercy a parent is now imploring for me? Can I cherish these evil propensities, the destruction of which he now supplicates? Shall I despise those graces which he entreats the Father of goodness to work in me? or turn away my ear from that law which he wishes may be written on my heart?
III. Some motives.
1. Let parents consider that the vows of God are upon them. When your children were baptized you acknowledged that it was your duty to train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and solemnly engaged before God and His Church to perform it. And can your conscience permit you to be inattentive to the best interests of the children of your vows?
2. Consider the examples which are set before you to direct and encourage you in this duty (Gen_18:19; Psa_34:11).
3. Consider how much the success and the happiness of your children in life depend on your early care. Nothing is so likely to secure success in any business or profession, as industry and sobriety, justice and truth. And you know how much happiness depends on the state of the mind, and on the nature of the habits. Evil passions will make the heart wretched in the midst of honours and abundance, while piety and contentment will keep the soul in peace in every affliction. Habits of fickleness and indolence, precipitance and indecision, will involve men in perplexities, losses, and disgrace. By the counsels of religion, you secure for them a companion and a monitor, who will abide with them when you depart to the Father, and who will talk with them when you are silent in the grave.
4. I appeal to your regard to the Church, and to your country. Can you bear the thought that the institutions which you delighted to support will be deserted by your children?
5. I may plead with you from the regard which you feel for your own credit and happiness. Impious, profligate, and thriftless children will be the bitterest of your sorrows. On the other hand, virtuous children are the honour of their parents. There is no friend on whom the old man can lean with such pleasure as on the son in whom the kind affections are strengthened by Christian principle; and nowhere is the aching head so easy as on the pillow which filial piety has smoothed.
6. The common neglect of this duty should excite you to perform it.
7. Think on the efforts which are now made to corrupt the rising generation. If the lessons of religion are not taught, vice and folly will seize on the unoccupied mind, and acquire an influence there which no future exertions may be able to subdue.
8. Consider what comfort the discharge of your duty will yield you in the death of children.
IV. Reflections and exhortations.
1. What a blessing, to the young has the Bible been! Happy are the families which dwell under its shadow.
2. Let parents lay up in their memories the counsels and motives which they have heard. Listen to no suggestions that would detach you from your duty.
3. Let little children be thankful to God if they have parents who teach them the good ways of the Lord. Endeavour, by your meekness and docility, to render their duty more and more pleasing.
4. Let the young, whose parents are still continued with them, beware of imagining, that because they are now near to manhood they are above their counsels. Solicit their advice in your perplexities, and open your hearts to them in your sorrows. Give them the satisfaction of seeing in your temper and conduct the fruit of their early toils; and let them have reason to say that, so far from disappointing them, you are wiser and better than they hoped. (H. Belfrage.)
Religious education
What is the true idea in the religious instruction of the young? It is that they have in them a moral and spiritual nature to be unfolded, or, in other words, an original capacity for religious thought, feeling, faith, and affection. It is indeed a great idea, to be realised only by a long and arduous process, carrying the soul not only far away from, but infinitely above, its original rudimental state, where the powers of good and evil, as yet unstirred, slumber together. To the negative care of not hurting the child must be added the positive, of helping him according to his great, pressing want. We need not fear to lay a vigorous hand upon his spirit in prosecuting this work. For that spirit is not the already delicately shaped, perfect excellence some suppose, like beautiful frostwork, which a breath may mar; or frail porcelain, exquisitely fashioned, which is easily shattered; but an undeveloped ability to fear and love and serve God, which we are by all means, and with all our might, to stimulate and bring forth. It is a work of difficulty. As the apostle says First is that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual. Leaving out extraordinary eases of those, on the one hand, apparently sanctified from birth with singular tenderness of conscience and nobleness of feeling, or, on the other hand, of a strangely stubborn and incorrigible temper--the being we have to deal with, beheld not as transfigured by our imagination, but in his real condition, is a being of undeveloped spiritual nature. Nor is this all. While the germ of the spirit is in him, the germ of what in Scripture is called the flesh is in him too. He is capable, not only of religion, but of selfishness, irreverence falsehood, unkindness, impurity. You may have seen the German drawing of the game of chess, in which a youth plays with the devil, the stake being his soul; while the guardian angel bends as a good genius over the contest. That game is in the heart: our task is to encourage and assist the good principle against the bad. But the difficulty is not only within. From the evil that is in the world too, from the general level of human conduct, flows a mighty stream of influence, tending to carry the child either into sin or a mean mediocrity of character. How lift him out of that stream? How get him above the unworthy temper that not only arises within, but predominates around and insinuates itself into him, like an unwholesome atmosphere, at every pore? I have but one comprehensive means or instrument to propose, and that is Christian truth--which Christ in His own prayer relies upon to sanctify His disciples. Truth is the magazine and armoury, by winning which into our possession and vigorously bringing to bear upon our object, we can effect our threefold object of developing the spiritual nature, subordinating the animal nature to its right place and proportions, and giving a check or antidote to the corruptions of the world. But it must be truth taught and exemplified; for otherwise it is hardly the truth, but only its body without the soul--truth flowing audibly from the lips and silently from the character--truth in our conduct, feelings, affections, and principles, as well as in our patient speech and persuasion. In the religious education of a child, you aim at a great effect. Do you complain that you see little fruit from your exertions? But have you put in motion a power or cause, great in correspondence to the effect you would produce? If not, you are as unreasonable as the man spoken of in Scripture who would build a tower without counting the cost, or as it would have been to expect the fountain of refreshing waters to gush up in our sight, before the rock had been bored and the quicksand bridged to conduct the stream. The moral faculty, in an immortal soul, is not a flower like that which opens in the morning to shut at night, but nearer resembling the century-plant; and we must be content to nurse it through grade after grade of growth, slowly approximating the bright consummation, which, even in the saint, is but partially revealed in this earthly life. Only for our good cheer, in this gradual and perhaps tardy process, let us have faith in the law of cause and effect, as operating no less surely in the moral than in the material world. No more certainly will the sonorous church bell answer to its clanging tongue, calling us to worship, or the liquid water spread its successive circles from the falling stone, or our own voice penetrate the listening ear, than, sooner or later, will the sincere and vital truth we utter or practically manifest produce an influence upon all within our sphere, especially upon the susceptible young. As the engineer in the steamship or at the locomotive, if he observe the wheels slacken, increases the speed by increasing the power, acts on the circumference by first acting on the centre, and quickens the pulsations of that great heart of brass and iron which he wields, that he may hasten the motions of his car or vessel; or as the aeronaut, if his balloon will not carry the given weight into the atmosphere, does not sceptically sit down to repine, but only sets to work to generate more of the buoyant force; so are we not to be dispirited and unbelieving, when our moral ends in the minds and lives of the young are not accomplished as rapidly as we desire, and they do not rise to the height of purity above the world we would fain see them maintain: but we are to replenish our own spiritual stores, and clear a new passage for the perhaps obstructed waters of that well within, which springeth up into everlasting life. If the explosion, the precipitate, or the transparency does not follow upon the mingling of the chemists ingredients, as he expects, he attributes the failure of his experiment, not to any mysterious fatality or insuperable hindrance, but at once to his neglect of some of the requisite conditions; for nature does not lie, or ever prove treacherous. If the architects roof settles or his tower leans, he judges he has made some mistake in his foundation, his materials, or construction. If the artists canvas presents an untrue portraiture, his eye has been at fault as to the colouring, or his hand in the proportions. If a political movement, business plan, worldly speculation, or trial in husbandry, turns out badly, there has been some want of discernment, contrivance, or forecast. So the failure of our moral experiment upon the hearts of the young indicates the absence of some necessary ingredient. The weakness of our spiritual building proves that we have taken the sand for our basis, instead of having been at the pains to penetrate to the rock. And if there be no success, no return, no fruit, from our religious calculation and culture, the first and most likely inference is, that we have not endeavoured wisely, anticipated prudently, grappled with the real difficulties, taken advantage of favouring circumstances, or well prepared this living soil for the seed of Gods Word. I know, and do not forget the peculiarity involved in the fact, that we are not working in gross matter, as wood or stone, or dealing with such things as the wind and the rain in our planting, or wielding the mechanical elements of any earthly economy; but trying to impress a spiritual substance, essaying to guide a self-moving and free being, whose liberty and inclination and individuality of nature, whose situation and exposure to change and temptation beyond our reach, give a singular character to the terms upon which we can stand with or approach him. But all this does not make void, or even for a moment bring into the slightest question, the principle that has been laid down. Whatever may be done to the child by others, or whatever he may do to himself, our action upon him will nevertheless tell the full tale of its own quality and amount. The ship sailing across Atlantic seas may be retarded by the shellfish that fastens on her smooth sides, or be swept out of her course by the Gulf stream; nevertheless, the breezes of heaven, that have blown upon her, have produced their entire effect; and she would have been more retarded or further diverted, had those breezes intermitted their constancy, or abated their stress. Much of the force in all machinery is lost in friction; but the artisan does not therefore doubt the virtue of the central motive power, however much of it may be neutralised on the way. So our exertions, whether cancelled by hindrances or producing their free results, are fully reckoned in a positive or negative way. And we know that God Himself conspires with our enterprise; that we are humble, privileged co-workers with Him; setting our action in the line with His friendly providence; fulfilling what will ever more reveal itself, as dearer to Him than the making of worlds, kindling of suns, and balancing of constellations; sowing our seed, and preparing its tender sprout and blade for the dew He promises of His Spirit, and the rain that will descend of His grace. Said a wise elder in the ministry of the Gospel to a younger labourer in the vineyard, If you want to save the souls of your people, you will. So, if it be the real absorbing object of your desire and devotion to lead your little flocks into the ways of pleasantness and peace, you will at least set them in that blessed direction. And what reward of your labours greater than even their partial and commencing success? What should one so desire to do in the life he lives in this world, as to give to a soul the tendency of virtue, and inflame it with the love of God? (C. A. Bartol.)
On the religious instruction of the young
I. To discourse of the cluster of admonitions contained in the words of my text.
1. These admonitions are addressed to the children of Israel and to everyone who professes to be an Israelite indeed.
2. That little children must be instructed with patience and perseverance.
3. That the statutes and judgments of the Lord should habitually be the conversation of His people, in the presence of their children and domestics.
4. That the statutes and commandments of the Lord should be constantly kept in view, habitually read and remembered.
5. That the doctrines of Divine revelation and the laws of heaven are to be perpetually practised.
II. To specify some of the reasons why great attention is to be paid to the duty recommended in my text.
1. The authority of heaven binds you to this duty.
2. The love of God and of Christ should constrain you to the discharge of these duties.
3. The near relation in which you stand to them, and the engagements under which you have come for them, should excite you to the discharge of this duty.
4. You are obliged to discharge this duty, that the entail of religion may not be cut off from your family.
5. The consideration that this is the way to be a blessing both on the rising Church and the rising State, should excite you to the discharge of this duty.
Lessons:
1. From what has been said, let such as have been negligent in teaching their children and the rising generation in the knowledge of the statutes of the Lord, be convicted and reclaimed.
2. Learn to begin this pleasant and important task as soon as you possibly can.
3. Consider that this is the leading duty which you ought to discharge towards your children and the rising generation.
4. Learn from this subject to expect difficulties and discouragements when instructing your children in the ways of the Lord.
5. That you must not think of rolling the burden of the religious instruction of your children from off your own shoulders. (John Jardine.)
Parental obligations
I. The command.
1. It emanated from the highest authority, the Lord Jehovah.
2. Fraught with the utmost importance; extending both to the cultivation of personal religion and to the furtherance of youthful piety by the special inculcation of Scripture truth.
3. Demands implicit obedience.
II. To whom given. To Moses, as the temporal head, legislator, and judge of Israel, was confided the solemn and important charge of carrying into execution the commands of Jehovah. Thus, as a wise and faithful legislator, he spake unto the people all that the Lord God had spoken unto him (verse 27, etc.); to the intent that they should make them known to their children, that they might set their hopes in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments (Psa_78:5-7).
III. How far the conduct of Moses is worthy of our imitation. Although the Divine command delivered to Moses was intended for the Israel of God collectively, he regarded it as having reference to them also individually; and consequently, as obligatory upon himself, and intended, like every other Divine command, for the real happiness of man. Oh, ever let us receive the Word and command of God first for our own individual instruction; for it behoveth us, amid all our anxiety to impart, by personal exertions or by pecuniary supplies, the Word of God to others, to take good heed that we ourselves have received that Word with pure affection into our own hearts. Thus received, it will be the grand stimulus to personal holiness and to individual activity in the service of God. And besides, being brought through grace to hope in Gods Word, it is also a source of unspeakable comfort; and it furnishes the believers plea with God--Remember the Word unto Thy servant, upon which Thou hast caused me to hope. And when his hope is beclouded, or his faith is faint and sickly in the hour of languishing and depression, the believer can say, This is my comfort in my affliction: Thy Word hath quickened me; Thy statutes have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage. Nay, more, he can say, with the written Word of God in his heart--with Christ, the Eternal Word, formed therein the hope of glory, Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee (Psa_73:25). This gracious and happy state of mind, we shall do well to imitate the conduct of Moses, in regarding the command as specially obligatory upon ourselves. But is not the conduct of Moses in his social or domestic character also highly worthy of our imitation? Parents, do you love your children? I know that you do. Availing himself, therefore, of the period of childhood and youth (when the mind is most impressible, and impressions, good or bad, most permanent), the Christian parent seizes upon every opportunity for the inculcation of those principles which will best regulate the affections of the heart and guard against temptations to outward sin; nay, more--which are able to make wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. But what was worthy of imitation in the judicial and legislative conduct of Moses? All should respect the authority of God as revealed in His Word--the one grand standing statute book of the King of heaven, which ought to be the basis of every law enacted by the kings of the earth. The perfection of human law is the measure of the approximation of its principle to the Divine. The real prosperity and happiness of a nation will, therefore, always be in exact ratio with its practical knowledge of the Word of God. Lawgivers, and all who are entrusted with the administration of the law--magistrates, and all who bear office under them--would do well to imitate the zeal and fidelity of Moses, in enforcing by precept and example the inculcation of the Word of God as a national concern. (M. Seaman, D. D.)
The necessity and advantages of early religious education
I. What need there is of the earliest instructions, with the most constant care afterwards to reinforce them, in order to make and keep men wise, virtuous, and religious. To express this to us by similitudes both just and beautiful, some philosophers compare a human soul to an empty cabinet of inexpressible value for the matter and workmanship, and particularly for the wonderful contrivance of it, as having all imaginable conveniences within for treasuring up jewels and curiosities of every kind. But, then, we ourselves must collect and sort them, and we shall ill deserve such a present from the Maker if we keep it empty or fill it with trifles; nay, if we do not, as we have opportunity, furnish and enrich it with whatsoever is of use or worth in art or nature. This ought indeed to he the main business of our lives. Others, with equal truth and justice, have likened the minds of children to a rasa tabula, or white paper, whereon we may imprint or write what characters we please, which will prove so lasting as not to be effaced without injuring or destroying the beauty of the whole; even as experience shows, and the son of Sirach advises, My son, gather instruction from thy youth up so shalt thou find wisdom till thine old age (Sir_6:18). These first characters therefore ought to be deeply and beautifully struck, and the learning they express should be of great price. And this, if timely care be taken, may be done with ease, because the mind is then soft and tender, and because truth and right are by the nature of things as pleasant to the soul as light and proportion to the eye or as sweet as honey to the taste (Pro_11:10; Pro_24:13-14).
II. What advantages are likely to follow from such instructions and such care, as well to the persons who are objects of them as to the communities wherein they live.
1. As to persons themselves. Without a good education the best natural parts would profit little, and could never exert and show themselves to advantage. Men would be raised thereby no higher than savages in knowledge or virtue, and might degenerate into that ignorance and brutality which travellers relate of Hottentots. Good natural parts are indeed like jewels, which in their natural state show little of their worth and few of their inherent beauties, till the skill and labour of the artist have taken off their roughness, decked them with light, discovered their different waters and colours, and spread through every part an amazing brightness and glory. Education, after like manner, if it have its perfect work upon a human soul, will throw out to view and give a lustre to every latent virtue and perfection which otherwise might never have made an appearance, much less a figure, in the world. Thus, likewise, to speak in vegetable metaphors, the choicest seeds will prove of no value if we sow or plant them in bad ground where they will decay or die; and if they fall into good, they will be overrun and choked with weeds, which are ever most rank in the richest soils, unless constant care be taken to root them out. They certainly can never grow and flourish in any soil so as to bring their natural fruit to perfection, without cultivating, manuring, watering, pruning, and all the other arts of skilful management that the best of gardeners or husbandmen can exercise.
2. Without having any view to the good and happiness of private persons, a religious and wise education of children is of so great concern to the communities wherein they live, that in all the best ordered governments of old time, public care was taken of it; and in some of them it was thought right and necessary to take them wholly out of the hands of bad, ill judging, or over-fond parents, and to place them in public schools and seminaries. And though the natural claim of parents may, all things considered, be the best, yet we shall see great reason for the other practice if we consider too that religion and virtue is the only true cement of all society; that the principles of both must be conveyed by education; and that (as private vices spread their poison through the whole community) most of the disorders, mischiefs, and confusions which disturb and harass any state, or the members of it, may be justly charged upon the want of it. (John Donne, D. D.)
Child trained for Christ
A father whom I knew had a son who had long been ill and whose end was approaching. One day when he came home the mother told him that their child was like to die, and the father went at once to his bedside. My son, do you know that you are dying? said he. Then I will be with Jesus tonight, was the answer. Yet, father, he added, dont you grieve for me, for when I get to heaven I will go straight to Jesus and tell Him that you brought me to Him when I was a child. (D. L. Moody.)
The Bible the standard of education
If we do not adopt the Bible as our standard in training the young, combined training is impossible. If in moral principles every man is his own lawgiver, there is no law at all, and no authority. You may train a fruit tree by nailing its branches to a wall, or tying them to an espalier railing; but the tree whose branches have nothing to lean upon but air is not trained at all. It is not a dispute between the Scriptures and some other rival standard, for no such standard exists or is proposed. It is a question between the Bible as a standard and no standard at all. But training without an acknowledged standard is nothing--is an empty form of words, by which ingenious men amuse themselves. There are some who would borrow from the Bible whatever moral principles they have, and yet are unwilling to own the Scriptures, in their integrity, as an authority binding the conscience; because, if it is binding in one thing, it is binding in all. (W. Arnot.)
A whole family trained for God
I happened to know two aged ministers of the Gospel. One of them told him that he prayed that he might never have a child who was not a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ. God gave him ten children, and he said to me, on his dying bed, Nine of my children are Gods children, and I am dying full of faith that the tenth will be also His. It was my privilege to be the instrument in Gods hands of leading the tenth to the Saviour. (W. Grant.)
Training of children
The first thing to be instilled into the minds of children is to fear God. This is the beginning, the middle, and the end of wisdom. Next, they ought to be induced to be kind to one another. Great care ought to be taken to guard against speaking on improper subjects in their presence, since lasting impressions are made at a very early age; on the contrary, our conversation ought to be on good and instructive topics. Imperceptibly to themselves or others, they derive great benefit from such discourse, for it is quite certain that children take the tinge either of good or evil, without the process being discovered. (Philip de Mornay.)
Religious training
It is already a hard case with me, the Queen says, when she speaks of the pressure of public business which prevented her from giving to the little Princess-Royal all the attention she wished, that my occupations prevent me from being with her when she says her prayers. And we may quote entire the note of instructions in respect to religious training which the young mother of twenty-five put down for the guidance of her deputies in this important work: I am quite clear that she should be taught to have great reverence for God and for religion, but that she should have the feeling of devotion and love which our Heavenly Father encourages His earthly children to have for Him, and not one of fear and trembling; and that the thoughts of death and an after life should not be presented in an alarming and forbidding view, and that she should be made to know as yet no difference of creeds.
Training of children
Be very vigilant over thy child in the April of his understanding, lest the frost of May nip his blossoms. While he is a tender twig, straighten him; whilst he is a new vessel, season him; such as thou makest him, such commonly shalt thou find him. Let his first lesson be obedience, and his second shall be what thou wilt. Give him education in good letters, to the utmost of thy ability and his capacity. Season his youth with the love of his Creator, and make the fear of his God the beginning of his knowledge. (F. Quarles.)
Training children for God at the start of life
I do not think I was ever so much impressed by a picture as I was by one, although it was only a rough woodcut, that I saw in Chamouni, Switzerland. It was a representation of a group of people that had been trying a few months before to climb the Alps. You know that people who climb the Alps have a rope put around the waist, and guides go first and guides come after. The rope connects them all together, so that if one slips the others may save him from fatality. Well, this group of eight or ten people were on the side of the mountain, all tied together, passing along on a very slippery place, and one slipped and dropped, and the others slipped and were going down this precipice, when one man with more muscular power than the others, halted on the ice--stuck his feet into the iceberg and halted; but; the rope broke! Fifty years from now, at the foot of that glacier, the rest will be found. Here is a whole family bound together by a cord of affection wandering on the slippery places of worldliness and sin. All given up to the world. No Christ in that family. All bound together and on the slippery places. Passing on down, the father, at fifty years of age, strikes his foot on the Rock of Ages, and halts. But the rope broke! the rope broke! A ship carpenter in New York walks up and says: That vessel has been gone three days at sea. Why, there is a timber in that vessel that ought not to have been there. It was worm-eaten. Or, I had a timber put in that ship that was the wrong kind of wood. Oh! I am so sorry about it, I am so very sorry. I will correct it. I have another piece of timber to put in the place of it. Correct it! That ship went down last night in a cyclone. Oh! the time to train our children for God and for heaven is at the start; it is at the start. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Write them upon the posts of thy house.--
Gods laws to be remembered
1. At the time this command was given there were few written copies of the whole law, and the people had it read to them only at the Feast of Tabernacles. God, therefore, seemed to have appointed, at least for the present, that some select sentences of the law should literally be written upon their gates and walls, or on slips of parchment to be worn about their wrists or bound upon their foreheads.
2. The spirit of the command, however, and the chief thing intended, undoubtedly was that they should give all diligence, and use all means to keep Gods laws always in remembrance; as men frequently bind something upon their hands or put something before their eyes to prevent forgetfulness of a thing that they much desire to remember. But the Jews, forgetting the spirit and design of this precept, used these things as superstitious people do amulets or charms. They used also to put these slips of parchment into a piece of cane or other hollow wood, and fasten that to the door of their houses, and of each particular door in them, and as often as they go in and out they make it a part of their devotion to touch the parchment and kiss it. (J. Wilson.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v6 THOSE great verses, Deu_6:4-5, form the central truth of…
EDUCATION-MOSAIC VIEW
Deu_6:6-25
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THOSE great verses, Deu_6:4-5, form the central truth of the book. Everything else in it proceeds from and is informed by them, and they are dwelt upon and enforced with a clear perception of their radical importance. There is something of the joy of discovery in the way in which the unity of Yahweh and exclusive love to Him are insisted upon, not only in Deu_6:6-25 of this chapter, but in Deu_11:13-20. The same strongly worded demand to lay to heart Yahwehs command to love Him and Him only, and to teach it strenuously to their children-to make it "a sign upon their hand," and "as a frontlet between their eyes"-is found in both passages. It is worthy of remark also that nearly the same words are found in Exo_13:9; Exo_13:16. Presumably on account of this, some have ascribed that section of Exodus to the author of Deuteronomy. But both Dillmann and Driver ascribe these passages to J and E, and with good reason. Indeed, apart from the purely literary grounds for thinking that these formulas were first used by the earlier writers and were copied by the author of Deuteronomy, another line of argument points in the same direction. In Exodus the thing to be remembered and taught to the children was the meaning and origin of the Passover and the consecration of the firstborn, i.e., the meaning and origin of some of their ritual institutions. Here in Deuteronomy, on the contrary, that which is to be written on the heart and taught to the children is moral and spiritual truth about God, and love to God. Now the probable explanation of this likeness and difference is, not that the author of Deuteronomy, after using this insistive phrase only of high spiritual truths in his own book, inserted it in Exodus with regard to mere institutions of the cultus; rather, the writers of Exodus had used it of that which was important in their day, and the Deuteronomist borrowed-it from them to emphasize his own most cherished revelation. In the earlier stages of a religious movement, the establishment of institutions which shall embody and perpetuate religious truth, is one of the first necessities. It has become a commonplace of Christian defense, for example, that Baptism and the Lords Supper were made the most successful vehicles for conveying fundamental Christian truth, and that the celebration of these two rites from the first days even until now is one of the most convincing proofs of the continuity of Christianity. Naturally, therefore, the establishment of the Passover was specially marked out as the palladium of Israelite religion in the earlier days. But in the time after Isaiah, when Deuteronomy was written, the institutions needed no longer such insistence. They had indeed become so important to the people that the mere observance of them threatened to become a substitute for religious and even moral feeling. The Deuteronomists great message was, consequently, a reiteration of the prophetic truths as to the supremacy of the spiritual; and for the object of the warm exhortation of the earlier writings he substituted the proclamation of Yahwehs oneness, and of His demand for His peoples love. This seems a reasonable and probable explanation of the facts as we find them. If true, it is a proof that the need of ritual institutions, and the danger of unduly exalting them, was not peculiar to post-exilic times. In principle the temptation was always present; and as living faith rose and fell it came into operation, or was held in abeyance, throughout the whole of Israels history. Hence the mention of this kind of formalism or the denunciation of it must be very cautiously used as a criterion by which to date any Scriptural writings.
It is therefore with a full consciousness of its fundamental importance that the author of Deuteronomy follows the great passage Deu_6:4-5, with this solemn and inspiring exhortation. It is from no mere itch for religious improvement of the occasion that he presses home his message thus. Nor is it love for the mere repetition of an ancient formula of exhortation that dictates its use. He knew and understood the work of Moses, and felt that the molding power in Israels life as a nation, the unifying element in it, had been the religion of Yahweh. Whatever else may have been called in question, it has never been doubted that the salt which kept the political and social life of the people from rotting through many centuries was the always advancing knowledge of God. At each great crisis of Israels history the religion of Yahweh had met the demands for direction, for inspiration, for uplifting which were made upon it. With Protean versatility it had adapted itself to every new condition. In all circumstances it had provided a lamp for the feet and a light for the path of the faithful; and in meeting the needs of generation after generation it had revealed elements of strength and consolation which, without the commentary of experience, could never have been brought out. Now the author of Deuteronomy felt that in these short sentences the high-water mark of Israelite religion so far had been reached, and that in renewing the work of Moses, and adapting it to his own time, the principles here enunciated must be the main burden of his message. Further progress depended, he obviously felt, upon the absorption and assimilation of these truths by his people, and he felt he must provide for the perpetuation of them in that better time he was preparing for. This he did by providing for the religious education of the young. Whatever else Israel had gained it had been careful to hand on from generation to generation. The land flowing with milk and honey was still in the possession of the descendants of the first conquerors. The literature, the science, the wisdom that the fathers had gathered, had been carefully passed down to the children; and a precious deposit of enriching experience in the form of history had reached to the elect even among the common people, as the example of Amos shows. But the most valuable heritage of Israel was that continually growing deposit of religious truth which had been the life-blood of its master-spirits. From generation to generation the noblest men in the nation, those most sensitive to the touch of the Divine, had been casting soundings into the great deep of the hidden purposes of God. With sore travail of both mind and spirit, they had found solutions of the great problems which no living soul can escape. These were no doubt more or less partial, but they were sufficient for their day, and were always in the line of the final answer. As the sum of experience widened, the scope of the solutions widened also, and in the course of Providence these issued in a conception of God which elsewhere was never approached. This of all national treasures was the most priceless, and to preserve and hand on this was simply to keep the national soul alive. Compared with this, every other heritage from the past was as nothing; and so, with a simple directness which must amaze the legislators of modern states, the inspired lawgiver arranged for a religious education.
To him, as to all ancient lawgivers, a commonwealth without religion was simply inconceivable, and the hampering, confusing, and confused difficulties of today lay far beyond his horizon. Parents must take over this great heritage and lay it deeply to heart. They must then make it the subject of their common talk. They must write the profound words which summed it up upon the doorposts of their houses. They must let it fill their minds at their down-sitting and their uprising, and while they walked by the way. Further, as the crown of their work, they were to teach it diligently to their children, already accustomed by their parents continual interest to regard this as the worthiest object of human thought. But though the parents were to be the chief instructors of children in religion, the State or the community was also to do its part. As the private citizen was to write, "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God is one Yahweh; and thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might," on the posts of his door, so the representatives of the community were to write them upon the town or village gates. In those early days schools were unknown, as State-regulated schools are still unknown in all purely Eastern countries. Consequently there was no sphere for the State in the direct religious teaching of the young. But so far as it could act, the State was to act. It was to commit itself to the religious principles that underlay the life of the people, and to proclaim them with the utmost publicity. It was to secure that none should be ignorant of them, so far as proclamation by writing in the most public place could secure knowledge, for on this the very existence of the State depended.
But the religious instruction was not to be limited to the reiteration of these great sentences; in that case they would have become a mere form of words. In the last verses of the chapter, Deu_6:20-25, we find a model of the kind of explanatory comment which was to be given in addition: "When thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which Yahweh our God hath commanded you? then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaohs bondmen in the land of Egypt; and Yahweh, brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand," and so on. That means that the history of Yahwehs dealings with His people was to be taught, to show the reasonableness of the Divine commands, to exhibit the love-compelling character of God. And this was entirely in accord with the Biblical conception of God. Neither here nor elsewhere in the Old Testament are there any abstract definitions of His character, His spirituality, His omnipresence, or His omnipotence. Nor is there anywhere any argument to prove His existence. All that is postulated, presupposed, as that which all men believe, except those who have willfully perverted themselves. But the existence of God with all these great and necessary attributes is undoubtedly implied in what is narrated of Yahwehs dealings with His people. As we have seen, too, the very name of Yahweh implies that His nature should not be limited by any definition. He was what He would prove Himself to be, and throughout the Old Testament the gesta Dei through and for the Israelites, and the prophetic promises made in Yahwehs name, represented all that was known of God. This gave a peculiarly healthy and robust tone to Old Testament piety. The subjective, introspective element which in modern times is so apt to take the upper hand, was kept in due subordination by making history the main nourishment of religious thought. In constant contact with external fact, Israelite piety was simple, sincere, and practical; and mens thoughts being turned away from themselves to the Divine action in the world, they were less touched by the disease of self-consciousness than modern believers in God. In every sphere of human life, too, they looked for God, and traced the working of His hand. The later distinction between the sacred and secular parts of life, which has been often pushed to disastrous extremes, was to them unknown. For these among many other reasons, the Old Testament must always remain of vital importance to the Church of God. It can fall into neglect only when the religious life is becoming unhealthy and one-sided.
Further, its qualities especially fit it for use in the education of children. In many respects a childs mind resembles the mind of a primitive people. It has the same love of concrete examples, the same incapacity to appreciate abstract ideas, and it has the same susceptibility to such reasoning as this: God has been very loving and gracious to men, especially to our forefathers, and we are therefore bound to love Him and to obey Him with reverence and fear. To the children of a primitive people such teaching would therefore be doubly suitable; but the Deuteronomists anxiety in regard to it has been justified by its results in times no longer primitive. Through ages of persecution and oppression, often amid a social environment of the worst sort, there has been little or no wavering in the fundamental points of Jewish faith. Scattered and peeled, slaughtered and decimated, as they have been through blood-stained centuries, this nation have held fast to their religion. Not even the fact that, through their refusal to accept their Messiah when He came, the most tender, the most expansive, the most highly spiritual elements of the Old Testament religion have escaped them, has been able to neutralize the benefit of the truth they have so tenaciously held. Of non-Christian nations they stand by far the highest; and among the orthodox Jews who still keep firm to the national traditions, and teach the ancient Scriptures diligently to their children, there is often seen a piety and a confidence in God, a submission and a hopefulness which put to shame many who profess to have hope in Christ. Even in our day, when agnosticism and denial of the supernatural is eating into Judaism more than into almost any other creed, a book like Friedlanders "The Jewish Religion" gives us a very favorable idea of the spirit and teachings of orthodox Judaism. And its main stay is, and always has been, the religious training of the young. "In obedience to the precept Thou shalt speak of them, i.e., of the words which I command thee this day," says Friedlander, "when thou liest down and when thou risest up, three sections of the law are read daily, in the morning and in the evening, viz. Deu_6:4-9, beginning Hear; Deu_11:13-21, beginning And it shall be if ye diligently hearken; Num_15:37-41, beginning And the Lord said."
The first section teaches the unity of God, and our duty to love this one God with all our heart, to make His word the subject of our constant meditation and to instill it into the heart of the young. The second section contains the lesson of reward and punishment, that our success depends on our obedience to the will of God. This important truth must constantly be kept before our eyes, and before the eyes of our children. The third section contains the commandments of Tsitsith, the object of which is to remind us of Gods precepts. Today, therefore, as so many centuries ago, these great words are uttered daily in the ears of all pious Jews, and they are as potent to keep them steady to their faith now as they were then. For in most cases where a drift towards the fashionable agnosticism of the day or to atheistic materialism is observable among Jews, it will be found to have been preceded either by neglect or formalism in regard to this fundamental matter. Briefly, without this teaching they cease to be Jews; with it they remain steadfast as a rock. Uprooted as they are from their country, their national coherence endures and seems likely to endure till their set time has come. So triumphantly has the enforcement of religious education vindicated itself in the case of Gods ancient people.
In the remaining verses of the chapter, Deu_6:10-19, we have a warning against neglect and forgetfulness of their God, and an indication of the circumstances under which it would be most difficult to remain true to Him. These are uttered entirely from the Mosaic standpoint, and are among the passages which it is most difficult to reconcile with the later authorship; for there would appear to be no motive for the later writer to go back upon the exceptional circumstances of the early days in Canaan. His object must have been to warn and guide and instruct the people of his time in the face of their difficulties and temptations, to adapt Mosaic legislation and Mosaic teaching to the needs of his own day. Now on any supposition he must have written when all conquest on Israels part had long ceased. It is most probable too that in his day the prosperity of his people was on the wane. They were not looking forward to a time of special temptation from riches; rather they were dreading expatriation and decay. Consequently this reference to the ease with which they became rich by occupying the cities and villages and farms of those they had conquered is quite out of place, unless we are to regard the author as a skilled and artistic writer who deliberately set himself to reproduce in all respects the mind and thoughts of a man of an earlier day, as Thackeray, for instance, does in his "Henry Esmond." But that is not credible; and the explanation is that given in chapter 1, that the addresses here attributed to Moses are free reproductions of earlier traditions or narratives concerning what Moses actually said. If we know anything about Moses at all, it is in the highest degree probable that he left his people some parting charge. He longed to pass the Jordan with them. He could not fail to see that an immense revolution in their habits and manner of life was certain to occur when they entered the Promised Land. That must have appeared to him fraught with varied dangers, and words of warning and instructions would rush even unbidden to his lips.
There can be no doubt, at any rate, that this passage is true to human nature in regarding the sudden acquirement of great and goodly cities which they did not build, and houses full of good things which they filled not, and cisterns hewn out which they did not hew, vineyards and olive trees which they did not plant, as a great temptation to forgetfulness of God. At all times prosperity, especially if it come suddenly, and without being won by previous toil and self-denial, has tended to deteriorate character. When men have no changes or vicissitudes, then they fear not God. It is for help in trouble when the help of man is vain, or for a deliverance in danger, that average men most readily turn to God. But when they feel fairly safe, when they have raised themselves, as they think, "beyond all storms of chance," when they have built up between themselves and poverty or failure a wall of wealth and power, then the impulse that drives them upward ceases to act. It becomes strangely pleasant, and it seems safe, to get rid of the strain of living at the highest attainable level, and with a sigh of relief men stretch themselves out to rest and to enjoy. These are the average men; but there are some in every age, the elect, who have had the love of God shed abroad in their hearts, who have had such real and intimate communion with God that separation from Him would turn all other joys into mockery. They cannot yield to this temptation as most do, and in the midst of wealth and comfort keep alive their aspirations. In Israel these two classes existed: and to the former, i.e., to the great bulk of both rulers and people, the stimulus administered by the conquest to the material side of their nature must have been potent indeed.
It is here implied that the Israelite people when they entered Canaan had some moral education to lose. Whether that could be so is the question asked by many critics, and their answer is an emphatic No. They were, say they, a rude, desert people, without settled habits of life, without knowledge of agriculture, and possessed of a religion which in all outward respects was scarcely, if at all, higher than that of the surrounding nations. What happened to them in Canaan, therefore, was not a lapse, but a rise. They advanced from being a wandering pastoral people to become settled agriculturists. They gained knowledge of the arts of life by their contact with the Canaanites, and they lost little or nothing in religion; for they were themselves only image-worshippers and looked upon Yahweh as on a level with the Canaanite Baals. But if the Decalogue belongs, in any form, to that early time, and if the character of Moses be in any degree historical, then, of course, this mode of view is false. Then Israel worshipped a spiritual God, who was the guardian of morals; and there was in the mind of their leader and legislator a light which illuminated every sphere of life, both private and national. Consequently there could be a falling away from a higher level of religious life, as the Scriptures consistently say there was. Without perhaps having understood and made their own the fundamental truths of Yahwism, the people had had their whole social and political life remodeled in accordance with its principles. They had, moreover, had time to learn something of its inner meaning, and in forty years we may well believe that the more spiritually minded among them had become imbued with the higher religious spirit. Add to that the union, the movement, the excitement of a successful advance, crowned by conquest, and we have all the elements of a revived religious and national life among Eastern people.
Similar causes have produced precisely similar effects since. In important respects the origin of Mohammedanism repeats the same story. A semi-nomadic people, divided into clans and tribes, related by blood but never united, were unified by a great religious idea vastly in advance of any they had hitherto known. The religious reformer who proclaimed this truth, and those who belonged to the inner circle of his friends and counselors, were turned from many evils, and exhibited a moral force and enthusiasm corresponding, in some degree at least, to the sublimity of the religious doctrine they had embraced. The masses, on their part, received and submitted to a revised and improved scheme of social life. Then they moved forward to conquest, and in their first days not only trampled down opposition, but deserved to do so, for in most respects they were superior to the ignorant and degraded Christians they overthrew. They came out of the desert, and were at first soldiers only. But in a generation or two they largely settled to purely agricultural life, as landowners for whom the native population labored; and they gained in knowledge of the arts of life from the more civilized peoples they conquered. But in religious and moral character imitations of the conquered peoples involved, for the conquerors, a loss. And soon they did lose. The violence accompanying successful war produced arrogance and injustice; the immense wealth thrown into their hands so suddenly gave rise to luxury and greed. Within twenty-five years from the flight of Mohammed from Mecca, relaxation of manners manifested itself. Sensuality and drunkenness were rife; with Alis death the Caliphate passed into the hands of Muawia, the leader of the still half-heathen part of the Koreish; and the secular, indifferent portion of Mohammeds followers ruled in Islam.
Allowing all that can be allowed for exceptional influences in Israel, we may well believe that the circumstances of the first invaders were such as would strain the influence of the higher religion upon the nation. And after the conquest and settlement the strain would necessarily be greater still. Whatever drawbacks warfare may have, it at least keeps men active and hardy, but the rest of a conqueror after warfare is a temptation to luxury and corruption which has been very rarely resisted. Even today, when men enter upon new and vacant lands, and that without war and under Christian influences, the plenty which the first immigrants soon gather about them proves adverse to higher thought. In America in its earlier days, and in new American territories and Australia now, our civilization at that stage always takes a materialistic turn. Every man may hope to become rich, the resources of the country are so great and those who are to share them are so few. In order to develop them, all concerned must give their time and thoughts to the work, and must become absorbed in it. The result is that, though the religious instinct asserts itself in sufficient strength to lead to the building of churches and schools, and men are too busy to be much influenced by theoretical unbelief, yet the pulse of religion beats feebly and low. The feeling spreads, under many disguises it is true, but still it spreads, that a mans life does "consist in the abundance of the things which he possesseth"; and the heroic element of Christianity, the impulse to self-sacrifice, falls into the background. The result is a social life respectable enough, save that the social blots due to self-indulgence are a good deal more conspicuous than they should be; a very high average of general comfort, with its necessary drawback of a self-satisfied and somewhat ignoble contentment; and a religious life that prides itself mainly in avoiding the falsehood of extremes. In such an atmosphere true and living religion has great difficulty in asserting itself. Each individual is drawn away from the region of higher thought more powerfully than in the older lands where ambitions are for most men less plausible; and so the struggle to keep the soul sensitive to spiritual influences is more hard. As for the national life, public affairs in those circumstances tend to be ruled simply by the standard of immediate expediency, and strenuousness of principle or practice tends to be regarded as an impossible ideal.
To all this Israel was exposed, and to more. There are doubts as to the extent of their conquests when they settled down; but there are none that when they did so they still had heathen Canaanites among them. Throughout almost the whole country the population was mixed and constant intercourse with the conquered peoples was unavoidable. At first these were either Israels teachers in many of the arts of settled life, or they must have carried on the work of agriculture for their Israelite lords. Moreover many of the sacred places of the land, the sanctuaries which from time immemorial had been resorted to for worship, were either taken over by the Israelites or were left in Canaanite hands. In either case they opened a way for malign influences upon the purer faith. Gradually, too, the tribal feeling asserted itself. The tribal heads regained the position they had held before the domination of Moses and his successor, just as the tribal heads of the Arabs asserted themselves after the death of Mohammed and his immediate successors, and plunged into fratricidal war with the companions of their prophet. The only difference was that, while the circumstances of the Arabs compelled them to retain a supreme head, the circumstances of the Israelites permitted them to fall back into the tribal isolation from which they had emerged. The national life was broken up, the religious life followed in the same path, until, as the Book of Judges graphically says in narrating how Micah set up an Ephod and Teraphim for himself and made his son a priest, "every man did that which was right in his own eyes." With a people so recently won for a higher faith, there could not but follow a recrudescence of heathen or semi-heathen beliefs and practices.
To sum up, given a great truth revealed to one man, which, though accepted by a nation, is only half understood by the bulk of them, and given also a great national deliverance and expansion brought about by the same leader, you have there the elements of a great enthusiasm with the seeds of its own decay within it. Such a nation, especially if plied with external temptation, will fall back, not into its first state certainly, but into a condition much below its highest level, so soon as the leader and those who had really comprehended the new truth are removed to a distance or are dead.
In the case of Mohammedanism this was instinctively felt. We find the Governor of Bass-orah writing thus to Omar, the third Khalif: "Thou must strengthen my hands with a company of the Companions of the Prophet, for verily they are as salt in the midst of the people." The same thing is expressly asserted of Israel also by the later editor in Jos_24:31 : "And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, and had known all the work of the Lord, that He had wrought for Israel." It would almost seem as if Semitic peoples were specially liable to such oscillations, if Palgraves account of the people of Nejed before the rise of the Wahabbis in the middle of last century can be trusted. "Almost every trace of Islam," he says, "had long since vanished from Nejed, where the worship of the Djann, under the spreading foliage of large trees, or in the cavernous recesses of Djebel Toweyk, along with the invocation of the dead and sacrifices at their tombs, was blended with remnants of old Sabaean superstition. The Coran was unread, the five daily prayers forgotten, and no one cared where Mecca lay, east or west, north or south; tithes, ablutions, and pilgrimages were things unheard of." If that was the state of things in a country exposed to no extraneous influences after a thousand years of Islam, we may well believe that the state of Israel in the time of the Judges was a fall from a better state religiously as well as politically. Looking to the future, Moses might well foresee the danger; and looking back the author of Deuteronomy would have reasons, many of them now unknown, for knowing that what was feared had occurred.
It is striking to see that both know but one security against such lapses in the life of a nation, and that is education. Nowadays we are inclined to ask if this was not a delusion on their part. The boundless faith in education as a moral, religious, and national restorative which filled mens minds in the early, part of this century, has given place to disquieting questions as to whether it can do anything so high. Many begin to doubt whether it does more than restrain men from the worst crimes, by pointing out their consequences. And in the case of ordinary secular education that doubt is only too well founded. But it was not mere secular education the Old Testament relied on. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, valuable as these are as gateways to knowledge, were not in its view at all. What it was felt necessary to do was to keep alive an ideal view of life; and that was done by pouring into the young the history of their people, with the best that their highest minds had learned and thought of God. The demand is that parents shall first of all give themselves up to the love of God, without any reserve, and then that they shall teach this diligently to their children as the substance of the Divine demand upon them. Evidently by the words, "Thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up," it is meant that the truth about God and the thought of God should be a subject on which conversation naturally turned, and to which it gladly returned continually. Words about these things were to flow from a genuine delighted interest in them, which made speech a necessity and a joy. Further, parents were to meet the naive and questioning curiosity of their children as to the meaning of religious and moral ordinances of their people, with grave and extended teaching as to the work of God among them in the past. They were to point out, Deu_6:21-25, all the grace of God, and to show them that the statutes, which to young and undisciplined minds might seem a heavy burden, were really Gods crowning mercy: they marked out the lines upon which alone good could come to man: they were the directions of a loving guide anxious to keep their feet from paths of destruction, "for their good always." Such education as this might prove adequate to overcome even stronger temptations than those to which Israel was exposed. For see what it means. It means that all the garnered religious thought and emotion of past generations, which the experiences of life and the felt presence of God in them had borne in upon the deepest minds of Israel, was to be made the bounding horizon for the opening mind of every Israelite child. When the child looked beyond the desires of its physical nature, it was to see this great sight, this panorama of the grace of Yahweh. To compensate for the restrictions which the Decalogue puts upon the natural impulses, Yahweh was to be held up to every child as an object of love, no desire after which could be excessive. Love to Yahweh, drawn out by what He had shown Himself to be, was to turn the energies of the young soul outward, away from self, and direct them to God, who works and is the sum of all good. Obviously those upon whom such education had its perfect work would never be fettered by the material aspects of things. Their horizon could never be so darkened that the twilight gods worshipped by the Canaanites should seem to them more than dim and vanishing shadows. Every evil, incident to their circumstances as conquerors, would fall innocuous at their feet.
The instrument put into the hands of Israel was, viewed ideally, quite adequate for the work it had to do. But the history of Israel shows that the effort to keep Yahweh continually present to the mind of the people failed; and the question arises, why did it fail? If, as we have every reason to believe, the main tendencies of human nature then were what they are now, the first cause of failure would be with the parents. Many, probably the most of them, would observe to do all that Moses commanded, but they would do it without themselves keeping alive their spiritual life. Wherever that was the case, though the prayers should be scrupulously rehearsed, though the religious talk should be increasing, though the instruction about the past should be exact and regular, the highest results of it all would cease to appear. The best that would be done would be to keep alive knowledge of what the fathers had told them. The worst would be to render the childs mind so familiar with all aspects of the truth, and with all the phases of religious emotion, that throughout life this would always seem a region already explored, and in which no water for the thirsty soul had been found.
But in the children, too, there would be fatal hindrances. One would almost expect, a priori, that when one generation had won in trial and hardship and conquest a fund of moral and spiritual wisdom, their children would be able to take it to themselves, and would start from the point their fathers had attained. But in experience that is not found to be so. The fathers may have gained a sane and strong manhood through the training and teaching of Divine Providence, but their children do not start from the level their fathers have gained. They begin with the same passions, and evil tendencies, and illusions, as their fathers began with, and against these they have to wage continual war. Above all, each soul for itself must take the great step by which it turns from evil to good. No rise in the general level of life will ever enable men to dispense with that. The will must determine itself morally by a, free choice, and the Divine grace must play its part, before that union with God which is the heart of all religion can be brought about. No mechanical keeping up of good habits or fairer forms of social life can do much at this crucial point; and so each generation finds that there is no discharge in the war to which it is committed. As in all wars, many fall; sometimes the battle goes sorely against the kingdom of God, and the majority fall. The strength and beauty of a whole generation turns to the world and away from God, and the labors and prayers of faithful men and women who have taught them seem to be in vain.
The method of warding off evil by even high religious education is consequently very imperfect and uncertain in its action. Nevertheless this relative uncertainty is bound up with the very nature of moral influence and moral agency. Professor Huxley, in a famous passage of one of his addresses, says that if any being would offer to wind him up like a clock, so that he should always do what is right, and think what is true, he would close with the offer, and make no mourning about his moral freedom. Probably this was only a vehement way of expressing a desire for righteousness in deed, and truth in thought, somewhat pathetic in such a man. But if we are to take it literally, it is a singularly unwise declaration. The longing which gives pathos to the professors words would on his hypothesis be a lunacy: for in the realm of morals mechanical compulsion has no meaning. Even God must give room to His creature, that he may exercise the spiritual freedom with which he is endowed. Even God, we may say without irreverence, must sometimes fail in that which He seeks to accomplish, in the field of moral life. Philosophically speaking, perhaps, this statement cannot be defended. But it is not the Absolute of Philosophy, which can touch the hearts and draw the love of men. It is the living, personal God of whom we gain our best working conception by boldly transferring to Him the highest categories predicable of our humanity. He is, doubtless, much more than we; but we can only ascribe to Him our own best and highest. When we have done that we have approached Him as near as we can ever do. The Scriptural writers, therefore, have no pedantic scruples in their speech about God. They constantly represent Him as pleading with men, desiring to influence them, and yet sometimes as being driven back defeated by the obstinate sin of man. The Bible is full of the failures of God in this sense; and Gods greatest failure, that which forms the burden and inspires the pathos of the bulk of the Old Testament, is His failure with His chosen people. They would not be saved, they would not be faithful; and God had to accomplish His work of planting the true and spiritual religion in the world by means of a mere remnant of faithful men chosen from a faithless multitude.
But though this plan failed miserably in one way, in the way of gaining the bulk of the people, it succeeded in another. As has just been said, the purpose of God was in any case accomplished. But even apart from that, the religious education that was given was of immense importance. It raised the level of life for all; like the Nile mud in the inundation, it fertilized the whole field of this peoples life. It kept an ideal, too, before men, without which they would have fallen even lower than they did. And it lay in the minds of even the worst, ready to be changed into something higher; for without previous intellectual acquaintance with the facts, the deeper knowledge was impossible. Moreover the ordinary civil morality of the people rested upon it. Without their religion and the facts on which it was based, the moral code had no hold upon them, and could have none. That had grown up in one complex tangle with religion; it had received its highest inspiration from the conception of God handed down from the fathers; and apart from that it would have fallen into an incoherent mass of customs unable to justify or account for their existence. In every community the same principle holds. Hence whatever the theory of the relation of the State to religion which may prevail, no State can, without much harm, ignore the religion of the people. It may sometimes even be wise and right for a government to introduce or to encourage a higher religion at the expense of a lower. But it can never be either wise or right to be inadvertent of religion altogether. In accordance with this precept, the rulers of Israel never were so. They not only encouraged parents to be strenuous, as this passage demands of them, but on more than one occasion they made definite provision for the religious instruction of the people. In a formal sense that grew into a habit which even yet has not lost its hold; and hence, as we have seen, the Jews have been kept true in an unexampled manner to their racial and religious characteristics.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv6, 8 General Information:
General Information:
Moses continues to tell the people of Israel Yahweh's words as if the Israelites are one person. (See: Forms of You)
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I am commanding you
Moses is speaking God's commandments to the people of Israel.
will be in your heart
This is an idiom. AT: "you must always remember" (See: Idiom)
you will diligently teach ... you will talk
"I command you to diligently teach ... I command you to talk." The reader should understand these as commands.
translationWords
word
command
heart
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv7–9 6:7 Repeat them: The Hebrew verb (shanan) might suggest…
6:7 Repeat them: The Hebrew verb (shanan) might suggest “engraving” a text into a medium that cannot be obliterated, or it might simply mean “repeat.” Either way, the teaching of the Shema was to be indelibly imparted to children by constant repetition so that it would never be forgotten.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.